Beogradska deca cveća u akciji. Posle studentskih demonstracija 1968. „demonstracije“ na sceni 1969. Belgrade flower-power children in action. After the student demonstrations of 1968, “demonstrations” were on stage in 1969
O ne day in the mid-1960s, while walkingthroughNewYork’sCen- tral Park and chatting about the script for their future musical, Gerome Ragni and James Rado came across a group of hippies. These long-haired, infor- mally trained, youngsters were sprawled on the lawn, surrounded by banners opposing the war in Vietnam. Police o cers also came, with the intention of dispersing them, but the group stripped naked. The shocked po- licemen recoiled, but it was this scene that determined the future of theatre, and then later also cinematography. Ragni and Rado developed Hair for Broadway and the scene they’d witnessed to the chords of the song “Flesh Failures ”.That was on 29 th April 1968. A year later, the Belgrade show of the same name, the rst in a foreign language worldwide, and only the third anywhere, after Broadway and the West End, experi- enced a genuine boom in Yugoslavia. Na- ked bodies had never previously been seen on theatre stages – not only in Yugoslavia, but also globally – while its libretto was no less important to Hair’s popularity: the sto- ry of a rebellious generation seeking a way out of the ludicrousness of war and petty bourgeois mentality. And the music was al- so great, so even today we still sing“Let the Sunshine In”or“Age of Aquarius”. Authentic- ity was provided by nudists, who were en- gaged en masse in our theatre for the rst time, while everything was given a tough of glamour by Vladislav Lalicki’s outstanding poster, based on the model of the American version, but perhaps even more e ective. Also contributing signi cantly to the previously unheard of celebration of the sto- ry of free love instead of warfare was Miloš Forman’s 1979 lm adaptation of Hair, with Treat Williams in the role of Berger, the tribe’s main man, and John Savage portraying the newly-recruited Claude Hooper Bukowski, lled with doubts about his military calling. The public was split, at least the female pub- lic, between fans of the rst, better-looking dude and completely innocent victim of poli-
tics, and the second, whose place aboard the plane Berger took by accident and was own to the front line while attempting to enable Claude to have his last opportunity for love prior to heading o to war. Many of the girls identi ed with Sheila (Beverly D’Angelo), a high society girl that both men were in love with, and they were all in tears when it be- came clear, to the sounds of fantastic music, that Berger was boarding a plane that would only bring him back dead. The message of both the lm and the play was nevertheless optimistic – freedom and love will prevail. The credit for bringing to life in Belgrade that which had already been seen by Amer- icans on Broadway in 1968 belongs to late director Mira Trailović and dramatist Jovan Ćirilov, who watched the show at the Bilt- moreTheatreanddecidedtorecreateitatAt- elje 212. In truth, Ćirilov was doubtful of the possibility of nding enough musical actors here, but Mira was certain of success. And indeed, preparations for the Belgrade pre- miere had already begun by the start of the next year. Trailović and Ćirilov, together with pianist Saša Radojčić and co-director Zoran Ratković, began touring discotheques to see from the sidelines who danced the best, but also looked the best. The myth of Hair had by then already spread greatly across the then Non-Aligned Yugoslavia, ensuring those se- lected were more than willing to say yes. A call for auditions was also published in newspapers and responded to by Jugo- slav Vlahović, who would later become a professor at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade and an illustrator of weekly news magazine NIN. “I had then just graduated, was dealing with music and caricatures in an amateur capacity, and was eager for ar- tistic action,” says Vlahović. Hair wasn’t unknown to him either, as a regular reader of NME, which had published a still from the nal scene of the play. A screen- ing of the play on television reminded him of the parties then happening in Belgrade. He joined the ensemble, which changed his life, or at least enriched his youth. Not one
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